Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha has found a way to let Facebook users use personal analytics to get a detailed picture of their social media data, including daily posting activity and friend statistics.

It's fairly straightforward: type "Facebook report" into the standard Wolfram|Alpha Web site and the technology generates a report "with more than a dozen major chapters, broken into more than 60 sections, with all sorts of drill-downs, alternate views, etc.," according to CEO Stephen Wolfram, who also explains:

If you're doing this for the first time, you'll be prompted to authenticate the Wolfram Connection app in Facebook, and then sign in to Wolfram|Alpha (yes, it's free). And as soon as you've done that, Wolfram|Alpha will immediately get to work generating a personal analytics report from the data it can get about you through Facebook.

This is just the start. Wolfram said more features will be added in coming months.

Coincidentally, the news takes place on the same day that Microsoft Bing announced it has added a way for users to search their archives of Facebook photos.

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Charles Cooper was an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet.
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